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The Asus ROG brand has never skimped on external lighting, but these latest laptops are getting closer and closer to creating a full-fledged lighting spectacle on their lids. The company’s latest Strix lineup, particularly the ROG Strix Scar, has housed more LED “AniMe” lights on the cover than on the back of the most recent model ROG Phone 9. If the only thing you demand from gaming devices is excessive lighting, then the new ROG Strix Scar 16 and 18 would be at the top of the list.
However, if you don’t care about the lighting, there’s still a lot to like. The Strix Scar 16 and 18 feature an Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX and up to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop version with a maximum TGP of 175W and 24GB VRAM. As for the display, OLED contenders will have to settle for a 2560 x 1440 mini-LED screen with a 240Hz refresh rate. At least Asus promises that this screen will be particularly bright and will support Nvidia G-Sync and Dolby Vision HDR.
The AniMe backlight extends across the bottom right corner and you can set it to play a series of preset images or animations. During a briefing, I saw first-hand how the pre-installed system allows you to add your own GIFs to the backlights and customize the RGB light bar surrounding the case.
These are beefy laptops weighing 6.28 pounds in the lightweight segment, but these desktop replacements can support up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. Even better, Asus has made disassembling and replacing these parts much easier. The battery and RAM sticks are held in place with latches that take a few seconds to remove without the need for a special screwdriver.
ROG is also introducing its redesigned Flow Z13, a Windows-based gaming tablet with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU. This chip should deliver solid gaming performance on its large 2.5K (2560 x 1440) 180Hz tablet screen. Asus says it features a vapor chamber and arc-flow fans to keep the tablet cool with a beefy laptop chip inside. And of course it has the fold-out keyboard and stand typical of the average iPad.
I’m still not sold on player-specific tablets or phones except for the most die-hard Genshin Impact players. There are more options for mini gaming, especially with all the excellent handhelds on offer Asus’ ROG Ally X.
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